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C64 Month: M is for MORPHEUS!

To celebrate August being C64 Month, we’re writing about a different Commodore 64 game every day! Start from the beginning here!

I have to admit I was mighty tempted to use this space to write about Mayhem In Monsterland or Mega Apocalypse, but one thing kept drawing me towards Morpheus: interconnected systems.

See, I love Morpheus because all the upgrades you can buy for your super-duper spaceship all work with each other in interesting ways. The Inertia Converter can power the Shield Generators which in turn keep the radar working which gives you a direction to head in, for example. Each one of those systems can work independently, but mixing them together and finding a combination that works for you is one of Morpheus’ hidden pleasures.

I’m also a big fan of games that kind of exist by themselves without player interaction, and the systems you visit in Morpheus are a great example of this. There’s little drones that fly around repairing the twinkly things (I don’t have the manual in front of me and frankly can’t be bothered to go look up the real name of these things, bear with me here) you’re meant to deactivate, and you don’t just buy upgrades and have them instantly added to your ship – they get commissioned and you have to wait for them to arrive. I really like that.

Not many people remember Morpheus, and even less of them remember it fondly, but I really really really like how this game is designed. There’s a lot going on under the hood, and it requires patience and determination to figure it all out, but that’s my kind of game.